III. The apostolic witness to the NATURE OF Christ's Resurrection-Body.— That the grave was found empty on the third day, that on the same day He appeared to His disciples, and that these appearances, succeeding upon the empty grave, had already given rise on the third day to a belief in the Resurrection, are facts historically well attested by the Gospel narratives and corroborated by St. Paul's account. But there is more than this. The appearances of the Risen Christ were, according to the apostolic witness, not mere appearances and nothing more ; they were in the nature of interviews, sometimes for a considerable length of time, between Him and His disciples. 'There is no such thing in the New Testament as an appearance of the Risen Saviour in which He merely appears. He is always represented as entering into relation to those who see Him in other ways than by a Hash upon the inner or the outer eye : He establishes other communications between Himself and His own than that which can be characterised in this way' (Denney, Death of Christ, London, 1902, p. 67). And the apostolic narratives bear witness to a certain view of the nature or mode of exist- ence of the Risen Christ.
i. The witness of the Evangelists.— In the picture given in the Gospel narratives we have a noteworthy combination of seemingly opposite qualities in the Risen Christ's mode of existence.
(a) On the one hand, Christ seemed to have re- sumed the form of bodily existence maintained while on earth. His mode of existence was not phantasmal or apparitional like a ghost, but em- bodied. He appeared in a body possessing attri- butes and functions which attested its physical reality and identity (or continuity) with the former earthly body.
(1) He could be seen, touched, handled, as a purely spiritual existence could not (Lk 24™-, Jn 2U="). Indeed we are told that He ottered Himself to their toucli and handling to convince the disciples of His bodily existence : ' Feel me and see ; a ghost has not flesh and bones as you see I have' (Lk 243» [Moflatt] ; cf. Jn 20™). Or, as another report has it, coming either from the
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Gospel according to the Hebrews or from the Doctrine of Peter : ' Take handle me and see that lam not a bodiless spirit ' (l^natiui^,Smi/r>i. S, Xd/Sere, \j/ri<pa\ri(Ta.ri fie, Kal tSere 6Vi oi'K elfll Sai/ioi'lov iffiondTov). On ' tlesh and bones ' Westeott says : ' The sif;nili- cant variation from tlie ooiiimon formula " llesli and blood " must have been at once intelligible to Jews, accustomed to the ]novisions of the Mosaic ritual, and nothing would have impressed upon them more forcibly the transfiguration of Christ's Body than the verbal omission of the element of blood which was for them the sj-mbol and seat of corruptible life' (Ouipel of the Jiexiirreetion, p. 162 n.). We are not told that the disciples availed themselves of the test at Jesus' invitation. But in Mt 28' we read, ' They [the women] took hold of his feet and worshipped him.' If the disciples did not actually touch Him it was, it would seem, because ' they were so convinced, by sight, of His reality, that they abstained out of reverence from subjecting Him to the further test ' (Forrest, The Christ of Hist, and of Exper.'', p. 148 n.).
The body was apparently capable also of par- taking of food, for we are told that as they were still incredulous and 'wondered,' He took a piece of a broiled fish which remained from the evening meal and ate before them (Lk 24^'-^^; the words 'and of a honeycomb' are omitted by the best MSS). This touch in the incident, which is mentioned only by Luke, has been called in question by Loofs and others as ' secondary ' and ' representing the more realistic shape which the legend of the Resurrec- tion ultimately took.' Even Denney shares this doubt : ' There does seem something which is not only incongruous but repellent in the idea of the Risen Lord eating,' and he finds in it one illus- tration of Luke's ' tendency to materialise the spiritual ' (Jesus and the Gospel, p. 146). In support of this it has been noted that in the case of the meal with the two disciples at Emmaus (Lk 24^°), and in the later scene of the seven beside the Lake recorded in Jn 21'''", it is not said in either case that Jesus Himself partook of the bread which He distributed to others with His own hand. If we retain this touch, we must say with Clement of Alexandria, ' He did not eat for the sake of His body, but for their sakes with whom He conversed,' to convince them that they were not seeing a ghost. ' If there be resunection of the body, there is no reason why such a body should not have the power of taking food without depending on it' (E. R. Bernard, HDB iv. 234»). But even if we eliminate this detail in the picture, which ad- mittedly is the least certain element in it, the picture in its essentials is not appreciably altered. The Risen Christ's mode of existence was such that human eyes could see and human hands could touch and feel Him.